And Then There Were MoreMissing scenes and pov
by Evey Edge
Summary: Scenes missing from "And Then There Were More", plus the reunion scene from Michael's POV. Sophia's POV to start, followed by Simon's and Michael's.
1. Chapter 1

Michael's unmitigated gall was truly astounding. Not thirty seconds ago he as much as admitted that he would have let her die along with the president, the passengers, and all hopes of getting the rest of their people getting out of that prison. All for what? His two hybrid daughters. The daughters he was never supposed to have, living breathing evidence of his disloyalty to their mission, and to her. And now this ultimatum, these terms. What was happening here? Insurrection was everywhere she turned: William, Isabel, Thomas and who knew how many others. Even Simon had disobeyed her, the day of her release, when he'd doubled back to save the federal agents from the collapsing building. Maybe it was this planet, something in the air supply.

Sophia considered Michael's face. In some respects it was as she remembered it, handsome and strong, but she knew without question he had never looked at her before the way he looked at her now. He looked grim and unmovable. Gone was the shamed man who couldn't meet her eyes. This Michael would not be intimidated or cajoled. This strength she had never before seen in him, this was what becoming a father had done to him. She'd never get the truth out of him, not in time, unless she gave into his demands.

"Simon, would you please get on the phone and contact this Agent Collier. Ask her to set up a meeting between Michael and this Mr. Walker. If nothing else it might ensure that no more planes come hurling at me from the sky." Michael at least had the grace to look away.

"Right away," Simon stood, anxious to leave the room and make the call. Michael gestured at him to stop.

"Wait. Sean's not stupid. He'll assume any message supposedly coming from me is a trap. You'll need to know something only I would know." Michael was quiet a moment and rubbed his eyes wearily. "Tell her that Sean was going to propose on that cruise ship."

"And how would you know that?" Sophia's tone was sharp, but at this point she'd exhausted any pretense of patience.

"The day they left Sean asked for my blessing." Michael's eyes were aimed in Sophia's direction, but they were unfocused, as if what they saw was something far away, impossible to clearly perceive.

"And you gave it to him?" The whole concept was ludicrous. We were going home, Michael had known that, had worked with Simon toward that goal for decades.

"Yes." Michael shook himself slightly, clearing the vision of his would-be son-in-law from his mind. About time he woke up to reality.

"You know this whole exercise could lead nowhere. Even if Walker does contact, you there's no guarantee he'll have either of the girls or even have any idea where they are." They did not have the time or resources to waste on this. Thomas had to be stopped now, or billions would die.

"Sophia's right. There is a whole team of trained investigators working around the clock on tracking down all leads into the assassination attempt and they've turned up nothing. The people who are behind this are professionals." How could one man, comparatively a child, possibly triumph over a powerful and deadly conspiracy? One that she was beginning to suspect had ties back to her own cunning and ruthless offspring.

"You don't know Sean. If my daughters are alive, he will hunt for them until his very last breath."

Sophia searched Michael's face for signs of uncertainty and found none. Sean Walker must be quite something to have earned Michael's faith so profoundly. If the weight of the world wasn't solely on her shoulders, she might almost look forward to meeting him.


	2. Chapter 2

The wait for the return call was a tense one. Michael paced, and Simon and Sophia conferred in lowered voices. This exclusion wasn't lost on Michael, but he couldn't fairly say he deserved any better. He'd made it abundantly clear that his first loyalty no longer lay with them. When the call finally came through Simon picked up on the first ring.

"Hello?"

"I need to speak with Michael Buchannan." Upon hearing Sean's voice Michael had to resist the urge to snatch the phone out of Simon's hand.

"Is this Sean Walker?"

"I need to speak with Michael Buchannan or I am hanging up right now." Sean sounded different than Michael remembered. It had become more forceful, assertive. He sounded like a different man than the one who had rambled nervously before asking Michael's permission to marry Leila.

"Wait-he's right here..." Simon passed the phone to Michael.

"Sean?" Michael was unspeakably relieved. Sean was still alive and that meant Leila and Samantha probably were too.

"Michael." The some of the tension left Sean's voice, but he still sounded a little wary. Michael could only imagine what he'd been through to bring about this change.

"Sean, thank God! Are you alright? Have you found the girls?" The words came out, one right after the other, questions that had been rattling around in his mind all the days he'd been imprisoned.

"I found Leila a little more than a week ago and we just got Samantha back tonight. They're both fine." Michael couldn't form a coherent thought for 10 whole seconds. Leila. Samantha. Safe. Michael took the first deep breathe he'd had since this nightmare began. It was only after that, that he realized Sean hadn't answered the first part of his question.

"And you are alright, right?" Although his daughters had been his first concern, Michael had had more than one attack of guilt and fear when he had thought of all the dangers Sean was facing.

"Yeah, apart from minor gunshot wound, I'm fine." Apart from the…minor…What!

"Minor gunshot wound?" Was there even such a thing as a minor gunshot wound? Sean being a wanted man, Michael seriously doubted he'd had access to medical good care.

"Yeah…no big deal… it missed my artery, and Leila found me a great doctor to patch me. I'm good." Well that at least sounded a bit more like the old Sean if Michael focused on his voice and not the actually words he was saying, "Any way we're a little stranded right now, on account of having to use our car to ram the van transporting Samantha off the road-"

"You rammed a van off the road?" Michael was peripherally aware that Sophia and Simon were watching him shout into the phone like a sitcom father about to have a heart attack, but he other things to focus on at the moment. The fact that his daughter's boyfriend had apparently transformed into an action hero who dismisses "minor bullet wounds" and engages in high speed chases, for example.

"Yeah, well, no, technically we were driving up alongside and then he started trying to run us off the road, and I hit the brakes and he swerved off. But everyone was fine. It…wasn't just Samantha that they took. There were other little girls. We called the state police and took off with Samantha on foot." The others girls. He'd been trying to find them before the whole mess had begun. With any luck their parents could collect them from the authorities before anyone in the government realized why they had been taken.

"Can I speak with the girls?" It had been so long since he heard their voices…

"Uh, they're kind of sleeping right now… I could wake them up..." Michael rubbed his eyes. Of course they were asleep. It was fast closing on midnight and they'd both had one heck of a day.

"No, No. Let them rest, it sounds like they could use it. Just send me your location and we'll be there as soon as we can."

"We?" Though it was only the one word Michael couldn't miss the change in Sean's voice. Something had replaced the warmth Michael was used to hearing from Sean. Fear. Uncertainty.

"Yeah, me, and…friends." Sophia raised her eyebrow, but whether it was at Michael's hesitation, or his use of the words 'friends', he couldn't say. There was a long pause on the other side of the phone Michael was afraid Sean had hung up. He couldn't afford to lose them now, not when he was so close to getting his family back, "Sean?"

"Yeah, okay. I'll send you our coordinates now." Sean's voice hadn't completely returned to normal, but at least he was agreeing to the meet. Michael was finally going to see them again.

"Great. And Sean?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you." It was grossly insufficient to convey that level of gratitude Michael felt toward Sean, but right then it was all he could manage.

"See you tomorrow, Michael." Sean's phone disconnected. A minute later the phone buzzed the arrival of their location information. Michael, thanks to his years in the cockpit, quickly calculated Sean and the girls were approximately 6 hours from where he stood. He looked up at Sophia and Simon.

"Sean has both the girls. If we leave now we can make by there by 6 am." Sophia nodded once.

"Alright. Michael can drive. Simon, find out if any of our people have a residence in the area. We'll need somewhere to stay that's under the radar."


	3. Chapter 3

"Tell me about Sean Walker." Sophia watched Michael's face carefully hoping to glean something from his reaction to her question. Her hopes were in vain. Michael's eyes never wavered from the road, he didn't finch and he didn't blink. It was hard to connect this man with the one she'd seen animatedly speaking on the phone with Sean Walker.

"Sean is a computer programmer. I understand from Leila he was a bit of a hacker in his adolescent years. Since then he's straightened out. He graduated near the top of his class from one of the best schools in the country." Michael sounded indifferent, almost robotic, reciting Walker's history like they were statistics.

"Family?"

"None that he is in contact with. Parents are divorced, mentally ill mother and an alcoholic father. Sean took off after his high school graduation and hasn't spoken to either one of them since." Interesting. So Sean had no family of his own. That might very well explain his single-mindedness in pursuing his goal to recover Leila and Samantha.

"What about his relationship with your family?" This was what she really needed to know, how strong the bonds were between the Buchannans and Sean Walker.

"He's been with Leila for the past seven years. Leila loves him. He's been Samantha's big brother for her whole life."

"And you?" Michael finally turned his head to face her.

"And me, what?"

"How do you feel about Sean?"

"I …am very fond of Sean." Sophia stared at Michael waiting for him to continue, but Michael didn't elaborate. Her eyes stayed on him until he turned to her once again, "Sophia, if you tell me what it is you want to know, I'll be better able to answer you." There was just the slightest touch of hidden anger in his voice.

"What makes you think it's not idle curiosity?"

"Your curiosity is never idle." He was both impertinent and right. These questions did have a purpose: figuring out how best to proceed.

"I need to know how much he knows. How best to handle him. Whether or not he's going to be a problem." Michael ground his teeth slightly while considering his answer.

"The last time I saw Sean he didn't know anything, but he's been searching for answers about Leila, and I have no idea what he might have learned in the process." Sophia was comforted that Michael hadn't completely forgotten his oaths and told Sean the truth, but she was also apprehensive. If Sean had learned the truth independently of Michael, he might be more difficult to control. Trust, once broken, could shatter loyalty in a split second. She had learned that the hard way with Martinez.

"At this point I wouldn't know how best to handle Sean, except by being as straight with him as you can be." Sophia considered Michael's suggestion. When she lied to Martinez she had done so because she couldn't risk that him not believing the truth. With Sean Walker it was different. Neither she, nor her people were at his mercy, so his trust in her was less important. Still she didn't want him as an adversary. She enough enemies to contend with and evidence indicated that Sean should not be underestimated.

"Tell him truth? That his world might be about to end? That the woman he wanted to marry isn't fully human?" The term "killing the messenger" came to mind. Bad news is never welcome, even if it's requested.

"Sean won't like it. He might become angry and scared, but at the end of day he'll do whatever he has to to protect Leila." Michael really had become a romantic over the past decades. Still given Sean's response to the circumstances he has found himself in, Michael's assertion seem plausible.

"Not unlike yourself." Just for a second Michael's eyebrows drew together in something which resembled regret. A moment later his expression had reverted back to the neutral facade.

"You convinced the President of the United States to trust you. I'm sure you'll have no trouble with Sean." Perhaps, perhaps not. The President had badly wanted to believe her when he came to Inostranka. His own background made him sympathetic to the idea of strangers in a foreign land, distrusted because they were different. Sophia had known that and played on those sympathies. Sean, on the other hand, was just coming through an ordeal that would led him to be suspicious of everyone and everything.

"You do realize he cannot come with us. Bringing your children along is bad enough, but I will not permit anyone else to jeopardize our mission. Too much is at stake." They had a greater agenda here. They had concerns far larger than one man, no matter how brave or how in love. He wasn't one of them and Sophia couldn't afford to take the risk of including an outsider. They had already suffered through enough betrayal.

"I understand." Sophia was surprised at Michael's immediate compliance. She had expected some form of protest, if only because his daughter was bound to object to being separated from her boyfriend. Perhaps Leila would protest to the point where she'd refuse to come with them. Of all scenarios this was by far the most preferable. Although Michael's daughters shared blood with her people, in their hearts they were human. They had no idea what it meant to be one of them. They knew nothing and she couldn't trust them to obey her.


	4. Chapter 4

Sophia had elected to stay at behind at the house and sent Simon and Michael to collect Michael's daughters and Sean Walker. Simon had been advised to watch Michael, in case he was planning to grab his family and run. Simon didn't believe Michael would break his word, but then he hadn't believed Michael would attempt to crash a plane full of innocent people either. Simon glanced over at his old friend. Michael was staring out the windshield, squinting into the distance, while his right hand tapped on his leg.

"We have about forty more miles to go." Michael nodded, but his eyes kept scanning the horizon and his fingers keep drumming. Simon sighed and pressed his foot a little harder against the gas. Michael noticed the acceleration and looked at Simon.

"It's an open road. No reason not to shave a little time off the trip." Simon could feel Michael's eyes were still on him, but he kept his gaze on the road. After a minute Michael spoke.

"Did you want to say something to me?" Simon thought it was a strange question for Michael to be asking him.

"About what?"

"I don't know, maybe about my not telling Sophia what she wants to know, maybe about agreeing to fly that plane, maybe about my starting a family with a human woman. I mean we're all alone here, so you don't need to be the voice of diplomacy here." So that was it, Michael was giving him permission to scold him for his mistakes. Well, he had asked…

"I don't condone what you did in any of these instances. Not telling Sophia the name of the middle man is costing us time, time which neither we, nor the human race can afford to lose. Crashing that plane would have killed over two hundred people, including Sophia, and it endangered the safety of our people as a group. Starting a family with a human was selfish, considering that we were all working toward returning home. What would have happened to your wife, assuming everything hadn't gotten derailed and the portal was ready right now? What is going to happen to your children, if we succeed in stopping Thomas?" Simon felt a little released, now that gotten that off his chest. Michael, on the hand, looked…lost.

"I don't know. I don't…I can't…" Michael struggled to find the words to explain himself with, "For a long time I lived the lie…I kept my distance…but then I met her, and she…I just…lost perspective. I don't expect you to understand." Michael statement that struck a chord with Simon.

"Understand? Understand what it feels like to love someone so much that neither the past nor the future matter anymore? Understand how waking up next to her becomes your reality and the rest becomes a bad dream, a dark thought easily dismissed, like a single cloud in an otherwise blue sky? " Michael stared at Simon, comprehension dawning in his eyes. "I said I didn't condone what you'd done, not that I didn't understand it." If he had been in Michael's place, all those years along could Simon say with absolute certainty he wouldn't have done the same?

"I'm sorry." Michael could have been apologizing for any number of things, but right then Simon felt sure he was giving his condolences about the love that Simon had lost. It was the first time that anyone had acknowledged his loss. Thomas was far from sympathetic and Sophia…wouldn't have understood. It meant something, that Michael understood.

"Yeah, I'm sorry too. About your wife"

"Thank you," Michael's eyes grew dark in way that Simon recognized. He had seen the same look in the mirror every day for a year after he'd been forced to relocate. The dark spiral of thoughts could mire for hours if left uninterrupted.

About Sean Walker-" Simon figured this topic would be as good a distraction as any and Simon had questions that he could only ask outside Sophia's presence.

"Yes?" Michael's eyes refocused on Simon.

"You didn't argue with Sophia when she said that he couldn't come with us."

"No, I didn't." Michael tilted his chin forward slightly.

"Why?"

"You think he should?" Michael was dodging the question, but Simon allowed him to get away with it. They still had at least thirty minutes of driving left.

"I don't necessarily think it's a bad idea. Given what you told us about him and what he's accomplished on his own, I think he could be an asset. Do you disagree?"

"No." One word answer. Simon tried another tactic.

" Your daughters would have an easier time adjusting to everything if he was staying with us."

"True." Again Michael gave nothing about his thoughts on the matter.

"Do you think we can't trust him?" The most basic consideration when choosing allies. If Michael had doubts about Sean's loyalty that might explain why he didn't fight to involve him any further.

"I don't think Sean would betray us." Simon was out of guesses.

"Then what it is?"

"Since this all has begun Sean has been framed for murder, chased by the authorities, pursued by assassins, and shot. Haven't I done enough to him, without placing him in Thomas's crosshairs?" Suddenly it became clear. He wasn't agreeing with Sophia because he thought it was in their people's best interest…it had nothing to do with them at all…

"You're trying to protect him."

"I doubt Sean will see it that way."

"What about your daughters?" If Michael thought Sean was safer keeping his distance, wouldn't the same principle hold true for his children?

"They're in danger no matter where they are. If they stay with Sean, he might become collateral damage to the people that want the girls." Simon couldn't fault his reasoning, but still…

"Seems…unfair, his coming through all this, just to lose her now."

"Do you think I don't know that! Do you think I want to do this to him! To her? To them? Sean has been a part of my family for seven years! I owe him…more than I can ever repay." Michael lapsed into silence after his outburst. Simon studied Michael out of the corner of his eye. Michael rubbed his chin. He looked exhausted.

"You told Sophia the truth; you are very fond of him." Michael responded in the low voice, barely louder than a whisper. Still Simon heard him.

"No, I didn't tell Sophia the truth. The truth is that I am not "very fond" of Sean. I love him. I don't know how I'm going to explain this to him. God, I have no idea how to explain any of this to Leila."


End file.
